Virginia Man Is Charged in Plot on Capital Subway

WASHINGTON — A Virginia man was arrested Wednesday and accused of trying to help men he believed to be militants plot bombings at Washington-area subway stations, the Justice Department announced.

The man, Farooque Ahmed, 34, of Ashburn, Va., a naturalized citizen who was born in Pakistan, has been charged with collecting information to assist in planning a terrorist attack on a transit facility, and with attempting to provide material support “to help carry out multiple bombings to cause mass casualties at Metrorail stations,” the Justice Department said in a statement.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, provided no details on whether the men Mr. Ahmed had met with were undercover agents.

But a federal official who had been briefed on the case confirmed that Mr. Ahmed’s contacts had been F.B.I. agents who were part of a sting operation.

Mr. Ahmed, who was arrested early Wednesday, came to the attention of American authorities in April when he told associates that he wanted to engage in jihad, the official said. This information was passed on to law enforcement agencies, which began to monitor him.

The official, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not allowed to comment publicly on the matter, said the authorities believed that Mr. Ahmed was working alone and that he was not part of a terrorist cell.

Photo

Investigators at the Virginia home of Farooque Ahmed.Credit
Luis Alvarez/Associated Press

The Justice Department, in its statement, emphasized that “at no time was the public in danger during this investigation,” language that has implied an investigation in which federal agents posing as militants had infiltrated a group of young men.

According to the indictment, handed up on Tuesday by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., Mr. Ahmed took part in scouting a Metrorail station in Arlington and recorded video images of the station four times. In July, he gave a memory card containing the footage “to an individual whom Ahmed believed to be affiliated with Al Qaeda” in a hotel room in Sterling, Va., the indictment said. The authorities said he had also agreed to assess two other stations in Arlington as potential attack locations.

Mr. Ahmed’s case was similar to other investigations involving undercover federal agents that were conducted in Chicago, Dallas and Raleigh, N.C.

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Mr. Ahmed did not appear to be part of a pattern of home-grown extremists, like Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-born American who went to Pakistan for training and was convicted in a failed Times Square bombing, and Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan man and legal resident whose plot to bomb the New York subway went undetected for months.

Mr. Ahmed was not connected to a spate of recent shootings at military sites in the Washington area, Mr. Carr said. Nor was there any indication that his case was related to the recent terrorism warnings in Europe.

A public records search showed that he has a history of credit problems and several speeding violations.

Mr. Ahmed’s detention hearing is scheduled for Friday. In his first court appearance on Wednesday, he said he could not afford a lawyer; Mr. Carr said the court would appoint one.

If Mr. Ahmed is convicted, he faces a maximum of 50 years in prison.

Barclay Walsh contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on October 28, 2010, on Page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Virginia Man Is Charged In Plot on Capital Subway. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe